When no one else was
by Fandom-Geek17
Summary: Gendrya one-shot! Set during season 3 while Arya and Gendry are with the Brotherhood. Arya catches a weird disease and feels seriously bad. But who will be the first by her side to comfort her when she needs it the most? Fluffy Gendrya but at the same time M-rated sickness. Read and review!


**Hello everybody! Here is my first Game of Thrones fanfic! And since I'm so obsessed with Gendrya, of course it had to be Gendrya related! ; ) Fair warning to the faint-hearted. This is not rated M because of smut, but because of cursing and sickness. This is not suitable for those with a phobia for puking! You have been warned! It's both fluffly and slimy!**

 **I don't own any characters or settings!**

 **Enjoy!**

When no one else was

Arya and Gendry sat side by side in front of the open flame in the brotherhood's cave. Neither of them were saying a word to one another, and they didn't really have to. They were both tired and didn't have much to say, which they both seemed to be okay with. Arya turned her head to look at Gendry, whose eyes were staring blindly into the fire, his face unreadable. Sometimes, in times like this, she wished that she could see into his mind and know what he was really thinking. Though she reckoned he felt the same way about her, as she had been told several times by several people that she was difficult to understand.

"Well" Thoros of Myr said, announcing the whole group. "We should all get some sleep, we want to get an early start tomorrow."

"Why?" Arya asked. "Is something happening tomorrow?"

"We don't know" Thoros answered.

"You don't know?"

"You will never know what will happen tomorrow, child. That is why you must always be ready for what is coming."

"But you just said that you don't know what will happen tomorrow!"

"Exactly! Be prepared for anything." And with those words he turned around and started helping the other men with some quilts.

Arya rose from her seat and starting walking towards the entrance of the cave.

"Where are you going?" Gendry asked, who had also gotten on his feet.

"I have to pee…" Arya didn't know why she felt embarrassed of the truth. Ever since she understood that Gendry knew she was a girl she had been pissing in front of him just like he had, yet now for some reason it wasn't as easy admitting.

"It's dark outside."

"I'm not afraid of the dark!" Arya spat, offended.

"Neither am I. But still, be careful."

"Sure…" Arya answered slowly and turned around to go.

As soon as she was out of sight Arya picked up her pace. She walked a couple of yards away from the camp where she took a stick and started to dig up a small hole in the dirt to do her business in.

After she was done she filled the small pit with dirt again and started to walk back. Gendry had been right to tell her to be careful. It was pitch black and no torches were lit. She barely saw anything in the night. With her arms stretched out in front of her as a warning of objects in the way, Arya started to make her way back to the camp.

"Seven hells!" she suddenly cursed in the quiet night. Something very sharp had come in contact with her finger. Arya had to hold her hand only inches from her face to make out how bad the damage was. A small drop of blood ran down her finger and her whole hand was pounding.

Arya held wounded hand on the other as she walked back inside the cave.

Gendry was already lying down on his quilt when she got in even though many members of the brotherhood were still sitting up, talking. A small spark of gratefulness shot through her when she saw that Gendry had laid out another quilt for her to sleep on. She thanked him quietly when she lay down. Arya turned her back towards him, she always did that before she went asleep. There were other men around her all the time, yet she felt like her hit list of prayer was something private, something she would only share with herself and the gods she hoped were listening.

"Joffrey, Cersei, Illyn Payne, The Hound, Polliver, The mountain. Joffrey, Cersei, Illyn Payne, The Hound, Polliver, The mountain. Joffrey, Cersei, Illyn Payne, The Hound, Polliver, The mountain. Joffrey, Cersei, Illyn Payne, The Hound, Polliver, The mountain…"

XXX

Gendry woke up before Arya for once. After stretching himself he turned to his side, expecting to see Arya's peaceful, yet troubled face asleep, but what he saw was far from it. Yes, she was asleep, but her face was anything but peaceful. He almost wanted to cry out in shock at the first glance, but was just able to stop himself. After giving his mind a second to adjust to the image he took a closer look. Her face was covered in rashes of different size but they all had the same appearance. Reddish, dry, coarse and there was some kind of blue tone to them, not like purple. Red with a hint of blue. Gendry had never seen anything like it before.

Her face was covered, and from what he could see, most of her arms.

Gendry gently shook her to wake. At first she didn't move, but then her eyes fluttered open.

The first thing Arya felt was the need to scratch herself, and not just in one place, but all over her body. The itch was so intense, like no kind of itch she had ever experienced.

"Arya…" Gendry croaked out next to her. His face was filled with shock and disbelief.

"What is it?" Arya asked. Gendry opened his mouth to answer, but no words came out. Instead he just pointed on her arms. Arya looked down on her hands at first but then quickly rolled up her sleeves. "Seven hells! _What is this_?!" Arya ran outside with Gendry quickly following.

"Arya, calm down!" he called after her.

"Gendry, what is happening to me? What is this?" She almost screamed. Arya scratched every inch of her body that she could get her hands on while examining her rashes. "Ugh! It's itching so badly!" Yanking in the collar of her shirt she looked down on her stomach. "It's _everywhere_!" It felt like her whole body was tingling.

"Hey, Anguy!" Gendry shouted to the archer who stood a small distance away.

"What?" he called back.

"Come here and look at this now! What is going on?"

The archer made his way towards them but stopped as soon as he was close enough to see Arya's itchy form from a close range. For a moment he just stood there, watching her with a determining look on his face while Arya was itching and growing more inpatient by the second.

"What the fuck is going on?" Arya cried out when Anguy didn't say anything.

"Did you cut yourself anywhere last night?" he asked. Arya showed him her finger which he grabbed roughly. After staring at it for a second he released it and looked at Arya with a sarcastic smile on his face. "Great, just great." He turned his head and shouted towards the cave. "Thoros! Get over here how! The stupid girl got herself cut on a Blue Nightmare last night!"

Thoros showed himself from inside the cave and walked towards them with quick steps. Without asking for permission Thoros yanked Arya's hand towards him which she found very annoying while scratching a part of her lower back.

"What's a Blue Nightmare?" Arya asked.

"A plant that will cause you a hell of a week if we don't find the cure" Thoros answered. "Luckily the plant that will cure you usually grows near the Nightmare itself. Where exactly did you cut yourself?"

Arya led the way with Gendry, Thoros and Anguy following her. When she came to the right place she stopped.

"Around here somewhere…"

"And there it is" Anguy said pointing on a plant near a tree. "There's the bastard devil." He and Thoros walked up to the plant, watching it, but being careful not to touch it.

Arya and Gendry stepped up to. Gendry reached out his hand towards the plant.

"No!" Thoros slapped his hand away. "Unless you want to look like her tomorrow!"

Gendry pulled his hand away in embarrassment. "Is it contagious? Between people, I mean."

"No" Anguy said. "Why? Scared of catching it?"

"I wouldn't be even if it were contagious" Gendry answered as proudly as he could, stepping in a little closer to Arya just to prove his point.

"Well where is this bloody plant that's gonna cure me?" Arya spat suddenly, tired of not being any closer to a solution.

"First you have to be warned Arya" Thoros said. "The way this plant works is not very comfortable. Many people choose to just endure the week of itching from hell."

"Oh, what could be worse than itching worse than a dog with every god damn flea biting him in fucking Westeros?"

"Once you've eaten the plant, it will draw all the poison from the Blue Nightmare into your stomach, and let me just warn you that this comes with _severe_ stomach cramps. And then you will throw up all the poison. This process takes about a day, but is more painful than the rashes you have right now."

"I'm not going to look like this for a week! Just give me the damn cure!"

"Calm down!" Anguy spat back at her. Arya felt Gendry moving in a little closer on her again. And even though she would have done a perfectly good job at coming back at him, she liked protective aura she felt from him.

"Lad, take the girl back to camp while we search and prepare the curing plant." Thoros commanded.

XXX

Arya sat on a rock inside the forge while Gendry was working on a dagger. She watched the muscles play in his arms, chest, stomach and back. Usually the sight of him shirtless these days could distract her from anything or anyone, but not these rashes. This proved in her mind how bad off she was.

It had been a little over an hour since she and Gendry left Thoros and Anguy to work on a cure for her. Since she didn't really have anything to do and the men of the brotherhood thought she was a pain in the ass as she was complaining so much, she went to the one person she knew could stand her. Gendry.

"This is just my luck, you know" Arya complained.

"How so?" Gendry asked as he swung his hammer on the dagger.

"Because I can't go a day without getting jinxed anymore! Anywhere I go, bad things only happen to me!" Gendry looked unsure of himself for a moment but then said with as much cockiness he could muster;

"Was it such a bad thing to meet me?" Arya felt herself blush and looked down. Gendry was among the very few things that had happened to her that wasn't bad, and she thought about that every single day.

"No…" She whispered. But then she immediately changed to subject to something easier for her to talk about than her feelings. "Ugh! I can't reach!" For the last minute she had tried to reach a certain spot on her back that was driving her crazy, and as she failed more miserably, she got even madder.

Gendry put down his hammer and walked up to her. Slowly and gently he reached the one single point on her back that Arya couldn't. She had removed her vest after growing tired of it always getting in her and only had her shirt on now. Arya sighed in relief as the itching finally dulled.

"Thank you" Arya whispered softly.

"Anytime" Gendry whispered back.

To Arya's surprise, he didn't stop after a moment or two. Instead he continued, gently scratching other parts of her back too. Arya would be lying to herself if she said that the feeling of Gendry's gentle hand on her back didn't send signals down her spine that she had never experienced before. But now was not the time to acknowledge them, so she closed her eyes in hope that they would go away. They didn't, instead they just kept coming and coming so that Arya that work hard to force a sound from coming out of her mouth.

The sound of someone else entering the forge pulled her out of her thoughts and Gendry's hand stopped its caressing of her back.

Thoros stood there in front of them. Just for a second a sly smile played on his lips, as if he understood that he was interrupting something private, but then it was as if he remembered the reason he entered in the first place and his face became serious.

"It's ready, Arya" he said.

"Finally!" Arya exclaimed and jumped down from the stone she was sitting on to follow Thoros.

XXX

As soon as she had swallowed the last bit of the slimy, crushed plant, Arya felt immediate effect. Within less than five minutes the stomach cramps started. She had imagined them coming slowly an hour at a time. But oh, how wrong she was. It was like an explosion inside her and it started.

Now she lay curled in fetus position with her face buried in her vest which she used as a pillow, drawing slow breaths to try and ease the pain. Thoros had told her that she couldn't eat anything for the rest of the day, only drink water. That wouldn't matter. It was not as if she would be able to get anything down. Every now and again she could feel a strong pulse of pain radiating her stomach. When she asked about it, Thoros had also explained that that was the poison coming in contact with her stomach.

Gendry sat next to her, unsure of what to do.

"Do you want me to leave?" Gendry eventually asked.

"Yes" Arya admitted. "But I don't want to be alone either."

"Well that makes it difficult."

"Yeah, no kidding…" Another few minutes of awkward silence before Arya cried out in pain again. Gendry laid a careful, shaking hand on her arm trying to comfort her, a hand she immediately slapped away. She didn't want anyone touching her right now.

Gendry pulled his hand away. Even though Arya didn't look at him, she could imagine his hurt expression.

"I'll go and get you some fresh water in case you want some later" Gendry said and stood up before walking out.

After he filled up a bottle of water for her, he stood leaning against a tree. He took a few shallow breaths which didn't calm him one bit. Seeing Arya suffering like that hurt him more than anything before in his lifetime. The few glances he had dared to take of Arya's facial expression were imprinted in his head and refused to go away.

"How is she doing?" Thoros asked. Gendry hadn't seen him walking in his direction.

"Not good at all" Gendry answered and closed his eyes for a second to force the sounds of Arya's cries of pain into the back of his head. "And I really don't know what to do… When I'm there by her side, she wants me to leave. But when I'm gone, she doesn't want to be alone. It's like I can't do anything right!"

"Well you know that's not your fault. Or hers. You know how the girl is, always needs to be stronger than she is. All you can really is to sit there and let her know that it's okay to be weak just this once, and that it's okay to want comfort."

Gendry nodded slowly. Then he walked back to the cave.

He sat down next to Arya's fetus like posture and placed the bottle on her other side.

"I'm sorry…" She whispered.

"For what?"

"For- For slapping your hand."

"Oh." Gendry chuckled. "That's alright. No harm done."

Arya turned around carefully to face him, and then scooted over to lay her head in his lap. Gendry's hand travelled up to her hair, slowly pushing it back from her forehead. He felt how sweaty it was from all the pain. He continued to caress her hair, and for the first time in hours, Arya actually relaxed.

XXX

Well into the night, Arya was still awake. Not only was she in pain now, nausea had hit her too. She was still lying in Gendry's arms, but she had turned her back to him. She didn't want him to see her face right now. Her finger was repeatedly tapping the ground. Anything to get her mind to focus on something else other than how crappy she felt. Gendry was awake too, she felt his waking presence around her. She knew he was too worried about her to go to sleep, because she would have felt the same way about him.

When she felt another verge of nausea hit her took a deep breath and swallowed by instinct. It wouldn't be long until she puked now, and she knew she should be walking out of the cave so that there would be no chance of her puking inside the cave. But she couldn't find it in her legs to get up.

But suddenly she did, her instincts reacting again. She felt it in her throat, it was there building until the point of bursting, and it caused to panic a little. Arya scrambled out of Gendry's arms and ran towards the entrance with her hand covering her mouth.

"Arya?" she heard Gendry whisper, though she couldn't answer at the moment. She just kept running, not caring whose fingers or toes she stepped on. Gendry followed shortly after.

She had just made it to the side of the cave when she feel onto her knees and opened her mouth to let the contents of her stomach wash out. Even though her hair barely reached past her cheekbones it still managed to get soaked, and Gendry tried to keep it out of the way as Arya let another wave of vomit cross her mouth, and then another.

Arya took a choking breath and opened her teary eyes, and for the first time got a chance to look at the puddle at knees. Earlier that evening, Thoros had told her to not freak out when she threw up. And now she understood why. The whole puddle was a mess of light blue foam with a mix of the leaves she had eaten before.

"Gods, that is disgusting!" Arya cried out.

"Guess that is why they call it the _Blue_ Nightmare" Gendry said, half smirking, half looking worried on Arya's behalf. "Here." He gave her the water bottle he had been smart enough to grab before bursting after her.

Arya took it and poured some water into her hand which she used to wash her lips with, and then taking a small zip to rinse her mouth.

"Do you think you're going to throw up again?" Gendry asked as Arya dried her mouth with the back of her hand.

"I don't know. Not right now I think, but… I don't know."

"Well, anyway." Gendry took a hold of his shirt and pulled it over his head, again revealing his well-shaped body. "Here you go." He held it out to a confused Arya.

"I don't need your shirt" she retorted.

"Arya you can't sleep in a shirt covered in blue vomit." Arya looked down on her shirt and realized that it was in fact covered in the blue foam she had just thrown up. Arya stood up and Gendry did the same.

"Turn around" she ordered and he obeyed. Arya turned around too just to be safe before pulling her own shirt over her head and putting on Gendry's notably bigger one. "Done." She turned around and walked up to Gendry.

"Come on" he said. "Let's try to get a few hours of sleep." Arya nodded and followed him back inside the cave.

They pushed their quilts together before lying down, Gendry taking Arya in his arms, her head lying on his bare chest. She could feel his heart beat and chest rising and falling every time he breathed. The sensation was surprisingly calming.

"Get some sleep" Gendry whispered quietly and ran his knuckles over her cheek.

"You too" Arya whispered back.

Arya closed her eyes, knowing that this hell would be over tomorrow. She also took comfort in knowing that Gendry would be there to comfort here when no one else was.

 **Liked it? Leave a review! Please, please, please! Pretty please! *Puppy dog eyes* ; ) What did you think? What can I do better? Do you want to see anything else? Let me know!**

 **Note that The Blue Nightmare is a made up plant so don't sue me when you can't find it on Wikipedia!**

 **Take care!**


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